ENGLISH - SPANISH GLOSSARY OF TRANSLATION INDUSTRY TERMS

Author: Richard Pérez-Mongard
Creation Date: 12/Aug/2013

L1 interference
The tendency of a translator with a poor command of his target language and a higher command of his source language (specially when the pair of languages are structurally different) to transfer L1 items into the target language, rendering it “unnatural” to speakers of that language. The more aware a translator is of the structural differences between the languages the less he/she’ll make these mistakes. The grossest mistake is the use of “false friends”. But other mistakes, more difficult to identify by someone with poor command of a language are: collocations, idioms, double negatives, phrasal verbs, etc.
Spanish: interferencia lingüística

L1 translation
Work into the translator’s A language
Spanish: traducción directa

L2 translation
Translation into the translator’s C languages
Spanish: traducción inversa

L3 translation
Translation into the translator’s C languages
Spanish: traducción inversa

Language 1
L1, L2, etc.: terms used to classify language acquisition to indicate the “order” in which languages are acquired and to separate the primary language from others.
Spanish: primer idioma

Language Aide
(Aus) bilingual skills in a ‘customer service’ scenario, not a credential in interpreting or translating.
Spanish: empleado con inglés para atención de clientes

Language combination
The languages involved in translation work
Spanish: combinación lingüística

Language competence
The ability to read, write, and speak a language following the rules of that language and developing and understanding the meanings of sentences of a complex nature above that of the common user.
Spanish: dominio de idiomas, competencia en idiomas

Language for Specific Purposes
(LSP) language skills and competences for specific professional areas.
Spanish: Lenguaje para Fines Específicos (LFE), aprendizaje de idiomas para fines específicos, aprendizaje de lenguas para fines específicos

Language pair
The pair of languages involved in translation work.
Spanish: par de idiomas, combinación de idiomas

Language school
Institutions that teach languages but do not have staff with the training or experience for translating.
Spanish: escuela de idiomas

Language service provider
(LSP) the person or business that provides language services (language teaching, localisation, transcription, translation). Although a legal entity (business) can only be the middleman in the rendering of a service and the true service provider is a person, the term includes businesses that make use of the professional services of others. For this reason some include project management as a language or translation service although it has nothing to do with languages.
Spanish: proveedores de servicios lingüísticos, proveedor de servicios de idiomas

Language transfer
The tendency of a translator with a poor command of his target language and a higher command of his source language (specially when the pair of languages are structurally different) to transfer L1 items into the target language, rendering it “unnatural” to speakers of that language. The more aware a translator is of the structural differences between the languages the less he/she’ll make these mistakes. The grossest mistake is the use of “false friends”. But other mistakes, more difficult to identify by someone with poor command of a language are: collocations, idioms, double negatives, phrasal verbs, etc.
Spanish: transferencia lingüística, interferencia lingüística

Language variant
See dialects.
Spanish: variante regional de (idioma), variante idiomático, dialecto

Legal translation
It takes a highly skilled legal translator to translate legal documents from a coded law country (Chile) into the language of a common law/case law country (England and the United States) and vice versa, since many of the legal concepts do not have exact parallels. Additionally each common law country has some different terminology and procedures, complicating legal translation even further.
Spanish: traducción legal

Linguistic interference
The tendency of a translator with a poor command of his target language and a higher command of his source language (specially when the pair of languages are structurally different) to transfer L1 items into the target language, rendering it “unnatural” to speakers of that language. The more aware a translator is of the structural differences between the languages the less he/she’ll make these mistakes. The grossest mistake is the use of “false friends”. But other mistakes, more difficult to identify by someone with poor command of a language are: collocations, idioms, double negatives, phrasal verbs, etc.
Spanish: interferencia lingüística

Literal translation
Translation that closely follows the form or structure of the source text. When the word-to-word translation sounds unnatural or distorts meaning, oblique translation is required. Machine translation follows the word-to-word translation strategy and usually reads as nonsense or is embarrassingly funny. Synonym: metaphrase. See: Borrowing, Calque
Spanish: traducción literal

Localization
Term coined for adapting software and its translation for use in particular markets and language variants. In translation it refers to the process of adapting a text for use in a country with a different language variant, specially websites. Etymologically the word localisation is a one way route in translation (adaptation to the local), however it usually is considered a synonym of adaptation (a two way route: to the global or to the local). Contrary of Internationalisation.
Spanish: localización

Location markers
Linguistic references that are supposed to indicate a specific culture, such as names of people, names of streets, specific terms for food, or names for currency units.
Spanish: marcadores de localización

Machine translation
Translation produced by a computer program without the intervention of a human translator and using automatic data processing. As automatic data processing cannot imitate the complexities of the human mind and the varieties of language the output of machine translation usually is very poor, and only should be used to get a general idea of the possible contents of a text. Synonym: Automatic translation. Must not be confused with computer-aided translation.
Spanish: traducción automática

Modulation
The grammatical category can remain the same but the one object is seen from a different perspective: “shallow” is thus rendered as “peu profond” (not very deep), and “No Vacancies” becomes “Complet” (Full) or “he asked me for my papers” rendered as “me pidió que me identificara”
Spanish: modulación

Mother tongue
The first language that you learn when you are a baby, rather than a language learned at school or as an adult.
Spanish: lengua materna